Now we enter...
the maze.
I start the party out traveling east. We travel with trepidation down a long, straight corridor. There is a doorway on the left, and we enter.
Wow. Neotetsu is catching a lot of flak. The monsters must be jealous of his high starting ability scores! Immediately, he's down from 8 HP to 3 HP before we've had time to react. I guess now is a good time to talk about surprise rounds.
Occasionally you will surprise the monsters. If this happens, you are entitled to a
free round of attacks, with the restriction that you cannot cast spells. Needless to
say, sometimes the party will be ambushed, which has far less pleasant effects.
That's right, it doesn't mention what causes one side to get a surprise attack. As far as I can tell, it's entirely random. Kinda cheap, innit?
I give out combat order: I Neo, and Kao will fight (Kao has full health and Neo is too useful not to attack). Broken will attempt to Dispell the monsters, which I guess is a thing he can do (I had a bishop in a test run earlier, I never noticed that option). Hanzoku will cast KATINO, a sleep spell. Tawarochir will cast HALITO, which is like a fireball or magic missile or something. You guys are lucky I remembered the names of the spells, because you have to type them in perfectly or they can't be cast (we'll get to that in a minute).
That round of battle in short, Neo and I kill a kobold, and Hanzoku puts two of them to sleep. But go ahead and observe the full thing:
So, that's basically what a round of battle looks like in game. Of course, battles can go on for many rounds, so I'll usually just summarize the highlights. We have a lot of dungeon ahead of us.
In the next round, the fighters fight and Broken casts DIOS, a healing spell, on Neotetsu. The fact one of the kobolds is now asleep and we killed another means there's a lot less attacks on the party this round. It goes excellently: All three of the fighters get impressive hits, and Neotetsu is completely healed (but Hanzoku's HALITO misses).
It is unlikely we will see this degree of competence or valor from our heroes again soon. However, everybody gets 278 EXP, which is not bad at all.
After the battle we find a treasure chest:
I will explain all of the options you see there: "Open" opens the chest. Not usually a good idea, because chests are usually trapped. "Calfo" is a spell that automatically identifies traps, I don't think we have it. "Leave alone" is for elves. "Inspect" attempts to get the name of the trap, you might guess wrong (I think this is based on IQ and Luck) and you can even occasionally set off the trap- we can have everybody look if we want, and they may have different guesses. "Disarm" disarms the trap, with a chance of triggering it- but you have to guess what the trap is. If you guess incorrectly, you always trigger the trap. I will have Kaosian, our thief, inspect the trap.
Shit. You sure about that, Kaosian? I'll look myself...
I think it's trapless too. Well, only one way to find out... but Kaosian gets to be the one to find out.
Wow, he was right! Aren't we lucky. I continue to explore the rest of the room.
Uh huh. Trapless chests, friendly undead? What kind of pansy dungeon is this? Still, I'll leave them alone, it's best to avoid encounters when we can. The manual also claims that attacking monsters who propose a truce can have consequences.
Strange things have been known to happen to those who respond inappropriately to peaceful overtures in the Maze.
Yeah, that's plenty foreboding. I don't think I'll provoke the gods on my first dungeon foray.
While we have a breather, let's talk about how magic works.
Above is Broken's spells- the screen we see when we go to camp, inspect his character, and choose the Read option. We can see that there are seven levels of Mage spells, and seven levels of Priest spells. Broken has one first level priest spell point, so he can cast one first level priest spell. He must have started with two spell points today, because he used one healing Neotetsu's work related injury earlier. Spell points are regained when, um...
Points are reset to their current maximum values each time you enter the Maze for an
adventure (It's assumed you got a good night's sleep and studied your books over
breakfast.)
Thanks, manual! So basically, once our spellcasters blow their load, that's it until we retreat. This means we'll want to conserve our spells carefully. For now though, we need every advantage we can get in a fight so the party can gain a level or two.
Now let's look at Broken's actual spellbooks:
Not very informative, right? Like I said earlier, this screen (which can't be accessed in combat) is the only way to know what spells a character has (which have to be typed out perfectly in combat). Fortunately, all the spells are described thoroughly in the manual.
DIOS HEAL Type: Any time Affects: 1 Person
DIOS restores from one to eight lost hit points to a party member. It will not bring the dead back to life.
BADIOS HARM Type: Combat Affects: 1 Monster
BADIOS inflicts from one to eight hit points of damage upon a monster. It is the inverse of DIOS.
So there's what our priest can do. Hanzoku, our Bishop is already out of spell points. He has only first two mage spells, and no priest spells yet.
HALITO LITTLE FIRE Type: Combat Affects: 1 Monster
HALITO causes a flame ball about the size of a baseball to strike a monster, inflicting from one to eight hit points of damage.
KATINO BAD AIR Type: Combat Affects: 1 Group
KATINO causes most of the monsters in a group to fall asleep. KATINO only affects normal animal or humanoid monsters, and the duraton of it's effect is inversely proportional to the power of the monster. Sleeping monsters are easier to hit and successful attacks do double damage!
As you can see, when applicable, putting monsters to sleep is really effective. Tawarochir has the exact same spell list as Hanzoku (and all starter mages/bishops, I think) and is also out of spells for the day.
So, we've had our first victory, and our mages are mostly spent. I think I'll push my luck and try to get one more encounter in before leaving. We proceed down the hallway past the entrance stairs and go north, then turn right, and into another room at the end of another hallway (I'm not a quarter of the way into the first dungeon and I'm quickly running out of ways to describe our environs). There we have encounter with three skeletons!
This time we get the drop on them. Mages can't cast spells in the surprise round, so it's all melee attacks. I get a hit in, and Neotetsu kills one of the monsters outright. The next round, Neotetsu gets another kill and I strike down the last skeleton with a record 11 damage. Kaosian takes a bad hit though, putting him down to 2 health. We also get a chest at the end of the encounter- just because Kaosian is at 2HP with multiple stab wounds doesn't stop me from ordering him to inspect the chest. "Gas bomb." Alright, Kaosian, let's hope you're right. When prompted for the kind of trap, I type "GAS BOMB."
The word "OOPS" has never been so terrifying. Kaosian is now poisoned, and at 2HP. This means he has a chance to lose health every time we take a step. Without even exploring the rest of the room (but not before divvying up the gold from the chest, 10 each) we turn around and make for the exit- if we get there before he dies, he'll be automatically cured. I'll expend the last of Broken's DIOS spells on keeping Kaos alive once he's down to his last hit point. If we're lucky, we won't have an encounter- you lose health much faster from poison when you're in combat.
SHIT.
SHIT.Well, there goes our thief. I guess you guys predicted this, though. Broken moves into the vacated slot and joins melee combat. I, Neotetsu, and Broken all attack (he's saving his last spell). The other two mages can do nothing but cower in the back row. In the first round of combat we kill a skeleton, I take some damage, and we get a couple more hits in. More blows are exchanged, we kill two skeletons, and Broken uses his last heal spell on me (it's not like Kaosian needs it anymore). In the last round the fighters take down the skeletons before they can counterattack, and the party each comes away with 230 EXP and 14 GP. I don't remember if thieves can wear shields, but if they can, we'll be able to afford one for our next thief.
We also encounter 3 slimes on the way back. Luckily, this time we surprise them. We make short work of the slimes. They don't get a single attack in, but they aren't worth much.
Finally, the stairs! Y, sir, Y from the the bottom of my heart!
Let's review our progress: This is my map of what we explored.
For reference, our first encounter was in the bottom right room. Our second encounter was in a room we didn't map out, on the end of that little hallway that juts south. Kaosian got killed as soon as we got to the T junction. Aside from that, all I need is a few hints from the manual.
When you enter the Maze from the Castle, you always start on the first level as far South and as far West in the Maze as you can be, facing North.
Wizardry levels are constructed around the concept of a 20 x 20 grid. The word concept is rather loosely used here because the authors have done everything they can to misguide and misdirect you into believing that what you see on the grid is not real.
There are also some spells that can help us with this later, including one that tells us our exact coordinates and facing. I can't wait to get that one.
This is Graphy. He is sad because Kaosian died.
We're in town now. There's a few services provided, aside from Boltac's.
The Adventurer's Inn is our main place of healing (although it occurs to me that it would be cheaper to cheese the game and go into the dungeon, cast DIOS, and come out again to refresh spells). You also level up if you have enough EXP when you sleep there (I'm not sure if we do). The barracks heal 1 point a week, the economy rooms 3, the private room 7, and the royal suite 10. This is priced per character, and they don't have to stay in the same room.
Note: Age is important in Wizardry. Beyond the age of 50, you will become more and more feeble until eventually you will not be good for much of anything except chatting about the "good old days" before the invention of the wheel. Therefore, you do not want to spend too many weeks in bed.
Now, I don't know what age characters are supposed to have started at, or if time passes for other characters when one stays at the inn, or if time passes in the maze in any way. However, that's something we may want to be aware of.
Also, remember the Temple of Cant? Those guys can resurrect Kaosian.
As you recall, we have 265 gold, so this is an option- but we won't have enough money to heal up at the inn.
So what should we do? Do we take a new recruit, and bury Kaosian? Do we bring Kaosian back, and not have enough money to stay at the inn? Will we stoop so low as to go in and out of the dungeon until we've had enough heal spells to heal everyone? Oh, and just as a last reminder, it's possible to create characters even if the party is full- they automatically wait in Gilgamesh's Tavern until recruited.
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Topic: Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1981): Second Level (Read 10578 times)